Column: Why now?

Brandon Bell was one of the few Nittany Lions who could answer the question.

The senior linebacker had been a part of some of the program’s biggest wins in the past few seasons. Nail-biters that found the Nittany Lions on the winning side against UCF in Dublin or Boston College in the Bronx come to mind in 2014, or a 31-30 slugfest against Maryland a year ago.

But not since Penn State topped No. 14 Wisconsin, 31-24, in 2013 had the program beaten a ranked opponent. Opportunities against Ohio State, Northwestern, Michigan and Michigan State all resulted in losses last season. The same was true of Penn State’s lone game against a ranked opponent in 2014, a double-overtime, 31-24 loss to the Buckeyes at Beaver Stadium.

Considering his team’s pedestrian 4-2 record entering Saturday night’s game against No. 2-ranked, unbeaten Ohio State, the 20-point spread favoring the Buckeyes, and a remarkable 26-year span since the program beat top-ranked Notre Dame on the road, that the Nittany Lions were not yet ready to take a step toward stardom was thought to be understood. Among the least experienced, senior-devoid teams in the Power Five conferences, James Franklin’s team entered the game as a study in slow progress, regardless of an early season, external narrative suggesting catastrophe.

Still, entering Beaver Stadium’s media room as a 24-21 winner, improving the 2016 campaign to 5-2 overall and 3-1 against conference opponents, the question remained for Bell.

Why now?

Bell’s Nittany Lions had been slaughtered in Ann Arbor just a month earlier in his absence, a 49-10 thrashing that likely could have been worse, against a No. 4-ranked Michigan team that boasts all the things Penn State has lacked: consistency, depth, dynamic playmaking and a defense that has arguably established itself as the country’s best.

Needing overtime and a second-half comeback to top Minnesota the next week, the Nittany Lions dispatched Maryland easily before enjoying a much-needed bye week for their injury depleted defense and work-in-progress offense. Yet, at no point had Penn State played well enough to suggest it’d be able to contend with and eventually bottle up the Buckeyes’ explosive running game or produce points against a defense that had proven its potency throughout the year.

No matter, Bell said, insisting that he’s witnessed the program evolve through the past two years into one that could and would compete with the likes of an Ohio State on Saturday night.

“More guys are ready and wanted to step up and make that play,” said Bell. “Everybody obviously wants to win every game, but when it comes down to it some plays aren’t made. But this year, we got a bunch of dogs. They want to make that play, they want to make that tackle, they want to make that blocked kick, returned for a touchdown, and they went out and did it.”

Putting on a Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week performance with a career-high 18 tackles, Bell wasn’t just referring to himself.

Defensively, teammates Jason Cabinda, Manny Bowen, Garrett Sickels, and Torrence Brown help neuter J.T. Barrett, while Marcus Allen, Malik Golden, Grant Haley and John Reid kept the Buckeyes’ stuttering passing game at bay, surrendering 245 yards through the air but giving up only a pair of passes of 20-or-more yards. Even the Buckeyes’ vaunted rushing offense was stunted, needing a 74-yard Curtis Samuel touchdown carry to boost a stat sheet that otherwise would have looked like 39 carries for 94 yards.

Offensively, the Nittany Lions held true to the character they’ve shown throughout the course of the season. Securing just 276 total yards, 13 first downs and 22 minutes, 41 seconds in time of possession, Penn State produced a remarkable 285 yards on 13 explosive plays, defined as passes of 15-or-more yards and runs eclipsing 10 yards.

And special teams, a unit that has made its own slow progressions through the past three seasons, experienced the same struggles that have at times been daggers, coughing up a punt return and suffering a blocked field goal.

In the fourth quarter, though, the unit was able to stray from its identity as a group bringing modest gains with intermittent flubs. The blocked punt of true freshman Cam Brown and the Marcus Allen/Grant Haley blocked field goal for a touchdown swung the Lions from a likely loss to a win in a span of six minutes in the fourth quarter.

Better equipped to give themselves a chance than at any other time in recent years, the confluence of timely playmaking and an electric, positive atmosphere created an opportunity for the Nittany Lions.

“When the number two team in the country comes in and it’s the whiteout, we’ve got an opportunity,” said Franklin. “Opportunity was knocking for us and we needed to open that door and answer. The way we answer is by being prepared all week long, and our kids prepared.”

The reality of Penn State’s preparation extends well beyond Franklin’s words, of course.

Thoroughly prepared by prior heartache and at times demoralizing stagnation, the Nittany Lions walked through that door when given the chance. Building for the past two years, the areas of growth and the painful lumps that come through adversity manifest themselves Saturday night. Whether through the double-overtime loss to the Buckeyes two seasons ago, a surrendered 96-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in Evanston last year, bludgeoning at the hands of Michigan State and Michigan on the road in back-to-back seasons, or most recently, an overtime thriller to top Minnesota, all are included in a process that can only be described as "learning how to win."

Emerging from those experiences not downtrodden and depressed, but instead invigorated by the possibilities that could accompany future opportunities, the Nittany Lions wore those attitudes through the duration of Saturday’s game.

“I couldn’t predict how we were going to win. I believed that we were going to win in any shape or form. By any means is kind of just what I was saying on the sideline to everyone. ‘By any means! By any means! By any means’! And we did it by any means,” said Gesicki. “It was special teams. We blocked a punt, we blocked a field goal, returned it to the house for six, game winning touchdown on that. I definitely didn’t call it.”

Franklin did call it, though.

In the week of media availabilities leading up to Saturday's game, Franklin engaged with the benefits that can carry a football program forward. Whether through adversity or success, he said, the process of learning and development is something that occurs over time.

"All these experiences and all of these games, you learn something from. Whether you learn something from a loss or whether you learn something from a win; in life, just like the game of football, all those things are positive if handled the right way. And our guys, I think have really grown up from that," Franklin told reporters. "I think we've got a great opportunity on Saturday. I think all of the games that we've had this season, I think all the games that we had for some of our players last year, as well, all are going to help us prepare for what's going to happen on Saturday."

For a team that has and will continue to grow and evolve from its experiences, Saturday’s upset was not the mark of a finished product.

Though the remainder of its schedule suddenly appears more winnable than could ever have been imagined before the start of the season, let alone following an historic upset, the pieces of clay are still to be molded by Franklin and his coaching staff moving forward.

The identity of strengths, weaknesses and deliberate progress that defined the Nittany Lions’ first six games of the season did not miraculously fix themselves with the win. Instead, a sign of ongoing development and an emerging, encouraging reality of a team learning what it takes to win now exists for the Nittany Lions.

Armed with the knowledge that those opportunities can be fulfilled, the players within this Penn State football program are only likely to benefit from the experience in the weeks, months and years ahead.

“I told the team, this is who we are. It’s not a shock,” said Bell. “I know a lot of guys are feeling emotional because we just beat this team, but I said this is who we are, this is what we can be every week and this is who we should be every week.

“It’s definitely a huge step beating a top team, a team that we’ve come close to beating before but we never could really get past that step of a top team, and we did that today.”

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